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Where no league has gone before: NFL, Players Association, fans reaching uncharted territory

AP File PhotoNFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hopes to usher in a new era of power for the league.

PART IV — ENDGAME?
Labor, lawsuits, lobbying – blah, blah, blah.

Are they gonna play in 2011 or what?

Let's deal with 2010 first.

There will be an NFL season this year. The main difference from prior years is no salary cap. Some other key changes affect free agents, including which players can become free agents and which teams can sign them. For the record, the Lions do not appear to have any restrictions on their ability to sign FAs. But that's not a cause for celebration, since the restrictions hit those eight teams that were in the divisional playoffs this year. (For a great FAQ go here.)

Following the upcoming, uncapped season, there will be a draft next spring. Whether the rookie class of 2011 will play in the fall, however, is an open question.

In order to guarantee a 2011 season, there needs to be an extension of the present agreement or a new deal by this March 5.

Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

Which puts us at the negotiating table we set in Part I. Once there, we'll hear a whole lotta jibba-jabba with no real action: there's the draft to conduct and free agents to woo and, as we've seen, hanging in the background is the NFL's deep ball to the Supreme Court in American Needle, with a ruling not expected until May at the earliest.

The current line-up of Supreme Court Justices typically breaks along a slim 5-4 majority that tends to side with big business. Still, most legal scholars don't think that majority will give the NFL what it wants, meaning experts do not expect the Court to declare that the league is a single entity for all purposes, which would preserve the players' option of an antitrust suit should labor negotiations break down.

But even if the Court doesn't side totally with the league and punts the case back to the lower courts, it could still give the NFL great field position if the Justices merely accept the ruling of the two lower courts – that the league is a single entity in some things, like marketing and licensing the league’s intellectual property.

Such a limited holding by itself could have major repercussions for you and me: it would allow the NFL (including other sports leagues and maybe even other industries, like fast food companies and their franchises or hotel chains) to enter into exclusive deals for all sorts of things, resulting in higher prices and less choice. Today, it's an exclusive hat maker (Reebok); tomorrow it could be an exclusive video game developer (EA Sports?), jersey manufacturer (Under Armour?) or – more ominous – TV station (NFL Network, anyone?).

It's with that sort of game-changing shift in mind that the players and their lobbyists hit Capitol Hill last month. Thus, even if the Supreme Court rejects the NFL's single entity argument for all purposes, there could still be a Congressional response to any limited ruling that results in price increases and market shrinkage for NFL- or team-branded products, including access to televised games.

Back at the bargaining table, a less than full victory at the high court could mean the players have an advantage not just because the union has managed to keep its biggest gun (antitrust), but also because single entity status for licensing means the players might argue they don't need to give up as much in salary since the owners can re-line their pockets by sticking it to the fans tapping into the huge potential in all those exclusive deals.

Beyond that, the permutations on negotiations are endless and predictions best left to Miss Cleo.

If I were a betting man, however, I'd put money on a lockout next spring by the league. Why? Simply because the league has no incentive to concede to any union demands and five billion reasons to wait the players out due to those insane new TV deals that call for payments to the owners, regardless of whether there are games played.

To me, a lockout will be answered by an equally determined union, which will launch a counteroffensive on two fronts: first, by moving to decertify and sue on antitrust grounds (if they still have the option); and second, by openly seeking legislative action against the league with retired players joining present players in a concerted PR blitz (unified action being something the actives and alums have not traditionally been able to accomplish).

But before the legal proceedings start, my guess is we'll see Congress intervene – because what podunk congressman doesn't want to be the one to save pro football in front of all the cameras? – leading to a compromise that salvages the 2011 season albeit a little late, though in time for us to catch some other geriatric halftime debacle during Super Bowl XLV.

And if not, you'll have the perfect opportunity to join the rest of the world for the real Big Game.

Ryan Whitacre, an attorney in Chicago, is an unapologetic Spartan and indefatigable, though constantly bemused, Lions fan.